The relative speeds of ships...or am I missing something..

[Rafezetter]

I was looking at the Lua files of the ships (as part of a making a ship possibly idea) and noticed these lines:

-- Exhaust velocity Vc [m/s] is equivalent of engine efficiency and depend on used technology. Higher Vc means lower fuel consumption. -- Smaller ships built for speed often mount engines with higher Vc. Another way to make faster ship is to increase fuel_tank_mass.

ok seems simple enough BUT the Wave heavy hypersonic fighter has :fuel_tank_mass = 22, & effective_exhaust_velocity = 65000e3

yet the Kanara Interceptor has : fuel_tank_mass = 15 & effective_exhaust_velocity = 59167e3

Going by the above statements in both the Lua files - the Kanara is slower and less efficient fuel wise than the bigger Wave.

Is it meant to be like that or am I missing something? In most games of this nature there's always a smaller, faster courier/ hunterkiller type ship which I thought the Kanara filled, either that or I'm not understanding the numbers correctly.

[Brianetta]

You're missing something. A more massive fuel tank doesn't make for a faster ship, it makes for a slower one.

[Rafezetter]

So...why does it say "Another way to make faster ship is to increase fuel_tank_mass." IN the ship spec .LUA file?

[Brianetta]

Well, it'll be faster eventually, having more propellant to expend. Its acceleration won't be as great, though. It depends how long the journey is, and whether there's time for a more massive ship to reach a higher speed. Certainly at the start of the journey, the ship attempting to accelerate itself and a bunch of fuel as well has the lower performance.

[Rafezetter]

Ahh well yes of course I understand in the real world speed = mass+inertia+time, I guess I hadn't realised they had written such into the game.

Still not sure why the interceptor has a lower effective exhaust velocity, as it says this equals more fuel efficient consumption which you would expect from a small interceptor type of anything.

[Brianetta]

I'm having trouble parsing that last sentence. I'd expect an interceptor not to care about efficiency; its job is to intercept other craft and to do so would generally require a less efficient use of propellant with greater acceleration.

In any case, the specs of these ships are very new (as indeed are the ships), and we haven't made any really serious attempt to balance them up for gameplay yet.

[Rafezetter]

1 - What's with the new move to the word "parsing" - it's not the correct term to use in this instance (or most of the other times I see it) - parsing is language analysis, which is DIFFERENT from understanding; using a big word in the wrong way is asinine.

Try this on for size "The traditional grammatical exercise of parsing, sometimes known as clause analysis, involves breaking down a text into its component parts of speech with an explanation of the form, function, and syntactic relationship of each part".

I'm certain that's not what you are doing when you are reading my post.

2 - In most of the interceptors of the last 50 years or so designed, fuel efficiency is important, as speed is a factor and as pointed out elsewhere weight is a big part of that, so a more efficient engine that uses less fuel is the ultimate goal, and one of the reasons why several interceptors used solid propellant engines or 1 shot boosters alongside traditional liquid fueled ones.

3 - the last part of your last post would have been the best way to answer my first, thus saving both of us this little to and fro.

Having said that - Pioneer is great, I still have my frontier saves, but somehow just couldn't bring myself to reload the game up. Pioneer gives me that reason, even without the ships n such yet.

[Brianetta]

I'm certain that's not what you are doing when you are reading my post.

Actually, I did resort to that, but what followed the comma is an ambiguous jumble to me. That might just be me (I have Asperger syndrome), but it's definitely a failure to parse.

Point 2: All our ships are using rockets, so comparison to the fuel efficiency of jets (which I'm presuming is the comparison here, again I might be wrong) doesn't work out. They pick up their propellant on the way, and are by no means efficient with their propellant use. They don't need to be, because it's not a finite resource.

Point 3: Sorry, I have trouble reading between lines, and thought you were wanting your specific questions answering (you never mentioned balancing of ships). Another side benefit of Asperger's, I'm afraid.

[laarmen]

Quoting Rafezetter (2013-03-25 10:42:47)

1 - What's with the new move to the word "parsing" - it's not the correct term to use in this instance (or most of the other times I see it) - parsing is language analysis, which is DIFFERENT from understanding; using a big word in the wrong way is asinine.

Try this on for size "The traditional grammatical exercise of parsing, sometimes known as clause analysis, involves breaking down a text into its component parts of speech with an explanation of the form, function, and syntactic relationship of each part".

I'm certain that's not what you are doing when you are reading my post.

Seriously? Two paragraphs and a word that doesn't even pass the lexical analysis in my brain, all just because of an expression that is, all things considered, quite common in the FLOSS community (and I suspect in CS in general) AND completely off-topic?

2 - In most of the interceptors of the last 50 years or so designed, fuel efficiency is important, as speed is a factor and as pointed out elsewhere weight is a big part of that, so a more efficient engine that uses less fuel is the ultimate goal, and one of the reasons why several interceptors used solid propellant engines or 1 shot boosters alongside traditional liquid fueled ones.

Today's interceptor (and today's technology) is nowhere near the one allegedly used in Pioneer. The relative impact of fuel compared to weaponry and the hull itself is quite low for an interceptor in Pioneer since the engines are already very efficient, and the fuel efficiency differences should have an impact on speed only in long trips.

[Rafezetter]

Sorry my apologies, I thought it was something other than how it seemed. Lol I had to look up FLOSS, as I'm a mere passerby sent here by Geraldine from the Elite dangerous forum; where mere mortals reside, who don't have an inkling of the alchemy wrought by coders, and no knowledge of the slang therein.

[laarmen]

As far as I'm concerned, no apology is (are ?) necessary, misunderstandings are quite common. I tend to sound harsher than I intend to myself. Code is no alchemy, and we are in need of « normal » people to provide us with some perspective. And who knows, if you hang around here long enough, you might be tempted to write some too ;-)

[Rafezetter]

I've looked at the modelling how to, and it looks well explained, but I'm also quite interested in the textureing or whatever of some of the already modelled free ones I've seen around, as used in that conversion Genesia (i think it was called). Having been a scale modeller for most of my life the CGI version seems like good fun and doesn't fall off the shelf!

The last code writing I did was on a BBC B back at school in the late 80's!

[robn]

Closing, no action here. The mailing list is a good place for further discussion.